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Headlines from The Right

 How the Right-Wing Press Is Covering the George Floyd Riots

By Howard Polskin

June 1, 2020 — Today is a special day for TheRighting.  It marks the first time I’ve published newsletter since the beginning of March without one story from a conservative news outlet about the pandemic.  Normally, that would be signify that the pandemic is loosening its grip and that life is heading toward some kind of normal – assuming that there can be any kind of normal as long as an erratic and divisive leader like Donald Trump is in office. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic story was overtaken by an almost darker, more sinister news event: the shocking death in broad daylight of George Floyd on May 25 and the ensuing protests and violence that have rippled across our nation.  The right-wing press that I examine every morning (websites, not Fox News television or right-wing radio) has covered the unfolding crisis and here are my takeaways this Monday morning, June 1, as I scan the headlines. 

  • The protests and violence are being covered by right but not as extensively as you might expect considering the magnitude of the story.  Mainstream and liberal press see this as a huge story with far-reaching implications.  Conservative media – not so much.

  • The protests are going to be the end of lockdowns.  That’s an interesting conclusion bouncing around on the right and it’s the led editorial of the influential and widely read Washington Examiner.  The subtext is that if protestors can congregate then why can’t people go back to church (and PJ Media also has a story today on that very topic)?

  • Law and order is important.  Echoes of the late 60s and Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 campaign.  The National Review pushed that viewpoint this morning as well as the far more right-wing American Greatness.  This is a predictable conservative response and I predict we’ll hear more of it in the coming months.  And I’m sure Trump’s reelection team is paying close attention.

  • Americans need guns to protect themselves, especially now.  The always colorful and bombastically self-assured conservative flame-thrower Kur Schlichter of Townhall asserted the need once again for Americans to arm themselves against “those who think they can steal our liberty.”  He means the protestors. And conservative Todd Starnes’ column this morning celebrated the heavily armed Italians who guarded their bakery in Cleveland because the police weren’t around. 

  • The protests are just an excuse for looting.  Obviously, a simplistic analysis of the complex dynamics but that didn’t stop LifeZette from running this story today.